New breed college tailored for cost-conscious

By Kelly BurkeJune 23 2003

It's chapel time for the infants of Rouse Hill Anglican College, and Kindergarten-E are putting their distinctive spin on the Gospel of Mark.

Despite the hour, mid-morning on a Thursday, the large room is crammed with impressed mothers and fathers. And when Lachlan Weber, 5, commandeers the microphone and confidently leads the room in a word-perfect Lord's Prayer, not a single head is unbowed in defiance.

"They want an environment where their child's later life decisions will be based on what they have been taught at school."

Yet, despite a location in Sydney's north-western Bible-belt, only 30 per cent of the students at Rouse Hill have church-going Christian parents.

Piety is not a prerequisite for enrolment. But agreement to, and participation in, the school's religious ethos is.

And with fees as low as $2800 a year per primary student, it is not surprising that the school received 115 applications for its 72 kindergarten places this year, before being forced to close the waiting list.

The college opened on its 13-hectare bushland site, bought for $3.5 million last year, and is still raw with newness. Not so much as a freshly painted swing garnishes the grounds. The gymnasium exists on paper only. A single basketball court and a newly turfed oval, laid in fewer than five hours by 100 enthusiastic parents, are the only lunchtime diversions.

"Parents are concerned most about what's happening inside the classroom," Mr Fowler said, referring to the Christian world view that permeates all corners of the school's curriculum.

The classrooms are state-of-the-art. The distinctive design, with wide verandas and home-rooms clustered around a central, internal communal learning space, has become a hallmark of the Sydney Anglican diocese's new breed of low-fee school. The schools are financed by bank loans secured through the diocese's Sydney Anglican Schools Corporation.

Schools like this do not come cheap. A single two-storey building costs more than $3 million.

By the time Kindergarten-E are sitting their HSC the school will have five such buildings, along with several single-floor modules incorporating an administration block and multi-purpose hall to cater for a predicted 1300 students.